There is an image pickup device containing a microlens array placed above an incidence plane side of an image pickup element substrate having light receiving elements provided thereon corresponding to a given pixel pitch, in which light is incident in the light receiving elements through the microlens array to provide a desired light receiving signal.
Furthermore, in recent years, an image pickup device called a light field camera is being developed. The light field camera is a device containing microlenses provided above an upper surface of an image pickup element array substrate, which the microlenses are designed so as to make light incident on one microlens be received by a plurality of pixels, and additionally, to make pixel regions on which light is received through each microlens overlap partially, thereby covering the entire pixels of image pickup elements with the entire microlens array. When light is incident in a pixel array of the image pickup element through such a microlens array, depth information can be distributed and recorded in a plurality of pixels. For example, focus image is reconstructed on the basis of the depth information distributed and recorded in a plurality of pixels, and a variety of images such as a plurality focused images and three-dimensional range images can be obtained.
Thus, because many effects are obtained depending on the combination way with other member, a microlens array is expected to be used in various use applications. If the time required to manufacture a microlens array is shortened, productivity of the microlens array is further improved, and this is preferred.
Patent Document 1 describes the technique in which by providing a light shielding area on a side surface of a substrate that forms a microlens array, a curing speed of an ultraviolet ray curable adhesive applied to an adhered surface of the microlens array and a liquid crystal display panel is made uniform over the entire surface, to thereby suppress occurrence of panel gap defect.
Some image pickup devices using a solid image pickup element such as CCD (Charge Coupled Device) or CMOS image sensor (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Image Sensor) are equipped with a filter (optical filter) having various optical functions in order to favorably reproduce color tone and to obtain a clear image. The representative example is a filter (near infrared ray cut filter) that shields light of a near infrared wavelength region in order to correct spectral sensitivity of the solid image pickup element to human visibility, and is generally arranged between an image pickup lens and a solid image pickup element.
Other example is a filter (ultraviolet ray cut filter) that shields light of an ultraviolet wavelength region or a part thereof in order to prevent deterioration of an optical member in an image pickup device by ultraviolet rays incident from the outside or to correct sensitivity in ultraviolet region of a solid image pickup element, and is generally arranged at a position near as possible an optical component at an light incident side of the optical component having an optical member that is easy to be deteriorated.
For example, Patent Document 2 discloses an example in which an infrared ray cut filter is stored in a CCD package in a CCD camera. Patent Document 2 further describes an example in which in an image pickup device equipped with a light controlling device containing a guest-host type liquid crystal element for controlling light, a filter material that absorbs or reflects ultraviolet rays is provided at a light incident side of the liquid crystal element in order to prevent dye molecules used in the liquid crystal element from being excessively irradiated with ultraviolet rays.
Furthermore, in recent years, size reduction of an image pickup device using a solid image pickup element proceeds, and such an image pickup device is becoming to be mounted on a small-sized electronic equipment such as a mobile phone. Additionally, further size reduction is required even in an image pickup device along with size reduction and high functionality of an electronic equipment itself. To respond to such a requirement in further size reduction, it is performed that a filter material that absorbs or reflects light having a wavelength to be desired to be shielded is stacked on, for example, an uppermost layer at a light incident side of an optical component that achieves a specific optical function, such as an image pickup lens or an image pickup element, to thereby integratedly provide the original optical function and filter function.
For example, an example in which an ultraviolet ray cut filter is attached to the end of lenses positioned at an incident side of a light controlling device in order to prevent incidence of ultraviolet rays into the light controlling device is disclosed even in Patent Document 2.